- Content: “Slicker but Still Marred”
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What You Need To Know:
Based on a book by Stephen King, the new RUNNING MAN is a slicker production with intense action, twists and pro-family content. However, it has many of the same quality and acceptability problems as Arnold’s movie, only more so. For example, it has much more strong foul language. Also, its plot about fighting big government tyranny is rather liberal, with anti-American, anti-capitalist content. The plot gets lost in three separate segments. Finally, THE RUNNING MAN has lots of strong violence that’s a bit hackneyed and too familiar. MOVIEGUIDE® rates RUNNING MAN excessive and unacceptable.
Content:
Strong Romantic, liberal/leftist worldview with anti-American and anti-capitalist elements, mitigated by a strong anti-totalitarian viewpoint, some pro-family moral content and a character wishes “Godspeed,” to the hero in one scene;
At least 68 obscenities (including at least 21 “f” words), five GD profanities and four light profanities;
Lots of very strong and strong violence such as people shot point blank, gunfights, hand-to-hand combat, a huge explosion takes out the basement and first floor of an apartment building, people shot point black with multiple rounds, people shot dead in the head, chase scenes, a grenade explodes after being tossed back and forth, gunfight results in man hiding behind men shot with multiple rounds;
It’s implied by video footage that a criminal has been sewing his wild oats with multiple women at a time, plus an evil government-run TV program smears a woman by accusing her of prostitution and making viewers believe it;
A Reality TV program shows a man in bed with multiple naked women, but the explicit upper female body parts are purposely blurred by the fictional Reality TV program, but there are some images of upper and rear male nudity;
Brief alcohol use;
No smoking or drugs; and,
Evil government-run TV program frames three contestants as vicious criminals, tyrannical government spreads false propaganda to maintain tyranny against its citizens, people are shown gambling in one scene, and TV Network showrunner and executive lies to and deceives people, especially contestants on his highest-rated program.
More Detail:
In the updated story, Glen Powell plays Ben Roberts, an unemployed blue collar worker who gets too angry at the injustices around him and his co-workers. American society is run by a totalitarian government with a tyrannical hand on the job market. The state-run TV network tries to keep citizens happy by game shows where people can win money.
The State’s biggest, most popular program with the biggest rewards is THE RUNNING MAN. It gives three alleged criminals a 12-hour head start before highly trained assassins are sent to hunt them down and kill them. Making matters worse, the TV program’s showrunners put a bounty on the three contestants’ heads so that anyone can win money by betraying or even killing the contestants. The bounty can increase the longer the contestants evade death. If the contestants survive for 30 days, they can win a billion dollars. However, the contestants must mail a video to the program every day. This increases their chances of getting caught near one of the country’s mailboxes.
Ben applies to one of the TV Networks’ game shows to get money to treat his daughter, Cathy’s, flu. He promises his wife, Sheila, a waitress and dancer, that he won’t do THE RUNNING MAN. However, the program’s deceitful showrunner, Dan Killian, promises Ben a safehouse for his family, including flu medicine for Cathy. Ben agrees to do the show, but, as he starts running, the program’s bombastic host, Bobby Thompson, demeans Ben’s wife as a prostitute and portrays Ben and the other two runners as vicious, psychopathic killers.
This angers the program’s vast audience and increases the chances of Ben and the other two contestants being betrayed and killed. Ben tries to expose the host’s lies on his daily tapes, but Killian, the showrunner, just replaces Ben’s video with a fake tape that makes Ben look even more despicable.
Given the underhanded methods at Killian’s disposal, can Ben manage to turn the tables on him and Thompson?
THE RUNNING MAN is based on a Steven King novel he wrote under a pseudonym. The new movie follows the original novel more closely than the Schwarzenegger movie, but the ending is different. The different ending is a little more satisfying than the book’s ending, which is rather anticlimactic (King’s novels often seem to suffer from bad, unsatisfying endings). That said, the new ending seems like it’s shoehorned into the story. Also, the new ending inserts one too many plot twists, if not two or three too many.
Looking at the new RUNNING MAN from beginning to end, however, the movie’s plot about one man’s fight against big government tyranny gets lost in too unconnected situations. For example, while running from the bad guys, Ben encounters a man with a family who’s trying to expose the government and its signature TV program. Ben then gets help from another underground rebel, who lives with an elderly mother who totally accepts the government’s propaganda against the contestants on the TV program. Ben finally becomes involved with a woman whose car he hijacks while running from the TV network’s hired government assassins. Ben must convince her that the network has lied about him and his wife.
The problem with all this is that Ben seems to have more chemistry with these three people than he does with his wife. Also, the segment with the second person is more fun than the other two segments.
Like the first movie, the new RUNNING MAN is about a desperate fight against a deceitful, tyrannical government. However, the dystopian society it envisions seems more like a dark liberal or leftist vision of traditional America rather than a conservative nightmare of a socialist or communist tyranny. Thus, the government in THE RUNNING MAN and its corrupt television network cynically use conservative, consumer, patriotic ideas and symbols to oppress, deceive and hypnotize citizens, workers and poor people. Despite this, someone tells the hero, “Godspeed,” the hero is trying to save his family,
THE RUNNING MAN also has lots of strong foul language and strong and very strong violence. Some of the action violence is rather hackneyed, and thus feels too familiar
The funniest thing about the RUNNING MAN movies is what the screenwriter of the first movie, Steven de Souza, said about it. According to the New York Post, he said one of the producers of the old 1989 TV program AMERICAN GLADIATORS, copied scenes from THE RUNNING MAN onto a video and told United Paramount Network, “We’re doing exactly this – except the murdering part.”
Until 1987’s PREDATOR, which made nearly $60 million, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s action movies in the 1980s made less than $40 million. Arnold’s movies didn’t start making more than $100 million until his crazy, whimsical comedy TWINS in 1988 and TOTAL RECALL in 1990. His biggest box office hit is still 1991’s TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, one of the most groundbreaking, exciting and powerfully moving science fiction movies of its era.
